Linkin Park won’t perform One More Light live because it’s “too sad to play”.
The title track of the band’s final album with late lead singer Chester Bennington – who took his own life in 2017 – is off the setlist for their current tour as it brings up too many memories of Chester.
The band’s co-founder Mike Shinoda explained to The Guardian newspaper: “[It was originally written] for a woman at the label that we worked with who passed away. Then after Chester passed, the world decided that it was about him. And so that’s just too sad to play.”
After Chester’s death, Mike took time out from Linkin Park and tried to process his grief through writing the solo album Post Traumatic.
He explained he “wanted to make Post Traumatic as a diary of how I felt for myself”, [but also had the urge to play live] “to provide an area for fans to commune and go: ‘Oh, Mike is still here. We didn’t lose everybody.’”
While Mike found the tour helpful, “in the beginning”, he could not wait to end it as it started to get “exhausting”, trying to deal with the grief of the fans.
He said: “And then towards the end it was exhausting. I had started to … I don’t want to say move on. ‘Move on’ to some people means not looking back and forgetting – that’s completely not how I felt. I felt like I was coping well and I was able to get up in the morning and not think about it, and I was evolving from the terrible stuff that had happened. Then I would go to the show and spend 90 minutes with half the crowd crying. And I’m like, this is f****** exhausting. You know how therapists see patients all day and help them, but then they need therapy themselves? That’s how I felt.”